Last-minute concessions by a developer helped lock up Jacksonville City Council support Tuesday for a controversial rezoning of commercial property along San Jose Boulevard in Mandarin.

Two restaurant sites – one for an experimental chain called Cabana Grill, the other still unannounced – are planned where Oak Bluff Lane joins San Jose north of Interstate 295 next to a Target shopping center. A bank kiosk is also planned.

Neighbors had argued the development would add too much traffic onto two-lane Oak Bluff.

Dozens of Mandarin residents, most opposing the plan, shared their thoughts at a public hearing that added hours to the council meeting.

Opponents led by Councilman Stephen Joost wanted the council to send the plan back to its Land Use and Zoning Committee for more review, but district Councilman Matt Schellenberg said the decision had already been stalled for months.

When the council recessed before a vote on returning the plan to the committee, Joost and site owner Oak Bluff Property LLC’s attorney, Paul Harden, struck a deal for a vote that night.

In return for Joost withdrawing his efforts at more committee review, Harden accepted five new restrictions on the site:

*Installing and maintain a “stacking lane” (a place to queue up cars waiting to make right turns into the property) on the developer’s land along Oak Bluff;

*Committing to not have cross-access easement agreements with adjoining property owners, which could, in concept, have become a way for traffic from Target to move onto Oak Bluff.

*A commitment that a drive-through lane at a restaurant site couldn’t operate before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m.

*No deliveries during those hours.

*A commitment that the western end of Oak Bluff Property’s land, where a retention pond stands now, could never be used for anything other than a pond or other natural uses.

Leaders of the rezoning opposition said the concessions seemed like the best deal they could get.

“We saw where this was going and there was really no way to resurrect it,” former Councilwoman Sharon Copeland told the council when asked if she accepted the deal. Copeland said the concessions, mostly the addition of the stacking lane, did help ease real neighborhood worries.

“That was the whole purpose here, to try to get traffic off Oak Bluff,” she said.

Despite making the deal, Joost cast the only votes against the two pieces of legislation (2013-623 and 2013-624) that changed the site’s land use and zoning.